Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Outsourcing: An Indian Spammer

Posted in Law, My Blog, Spam by Elliott Back on April 24th, 2006.

I guess I’ve got a major problem with outsourcing and globalization now. An Indian blogger is ripping off my content. As other countries and cultures enter the primarily western blogosphere, they may bring a different attitude towards intellectual property. However, I believe, in this case, that there is an absolute standard. For educational purposes, here’s what he’s copied so far:

  • His Legal Info matches my Legal Notice to a T
  • His Digg Defender post copies content from mine without attribution, and hotlinks the code.
  • He’s listed himself on BlogTopSites

This guy has the audacity to copy content at will, blog straight from digg, and then label it all “Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.” Uh huh, yeah right. Here’s what I can find out about you, my spammer friend:

  • Is named “xxx yyy zzz”
  • Uses the screen name xxx123
  • Use the email xxx123@gmail.com
  • Is from Mangalore, Karnataka, India
  • Is 16 years old

Here’s what I’m sending him, his host, and his host’s host. The infamous DMCA:

Sender Information:
Elliott Back
1108 Cascadilla Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
1-607-229-0623

To whom it may concern,

I act on behalf of myself, and am the exclusive owner of the copyright works in question, that is, all of the content of my website and blog network, found on elliottback.com and its subdomains. Browsing a server on your network, xxx and the URL xxx, I find unauthorized copies of the ElliottBack network material which infringes on my rights as copyright holder:

1) -redacted-
2) -redacted-

Please immediately remove or disable all access to the infringing material. This infringing material is not authorized by myself, and this Notice of Copyright is accurate. Under penalty of perjury, I swear that I am authorized to act on behalf of the Owner, which is myself.

Should you require further information, please contact me via email or telephone.

Signed,
Elliott C. Bäck
04-24-2006

ecb29@cornell.edu
607-229-0623

Why do people do this? Do they just not understand fair use?

Update: XXX has removed the infringing material. I’d like to think of this as a case of an amateur blogger getting his ropes, rather than anything else.

Update 2: In the spirit of hospitality, I have redacted all of the identifying information.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 12:36 am and is tagged with karnataka india, penalty of perjury, countries and cultures, ithaca ny, unauthorized copies, redacted, audacity, zzz, spammer, attribution, dmca, subdomains, digg, screen name, globalization, bk, cornell, creative commons, educational purposes, blogger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

14 Responses to “Outsourcing: An Indian Spammer”

  1. Clay Smith says:

    It would appear that he has fixed the problem? On a side note, perhaps his lack of understanding is a cultural thing?

  2. Rahul says:

    Hey has deleted the post. I think he didn’t knew that your content was copyrighted. Or he might be advertising your Digg Plugin. (I have seen that he had trackedbacked. )

    But before publishing this you should have contacted him. Its always wrong to insult the whole India for just one guy.

  3. Jay says:

    Yeah Rahul your right. He is just a kid. And I think he didn’t know that Elliots content was copywritted.

    Most Probably he was just trying to promote your Plugin. Or else he wouldn’t Have trackedback lol

    You should think before commenting on somebody

  4. Ravi says:

    Wat an Elliot Back wannabe dat guy hu copied ur content. Glad to see he got scared n deleted all the copied content of his blog or site :D I

    If people wanted anything of your site, they should ask you, i think it is illegal to copy stuff without the owners permisson? isnt it?

  5. wank says:

    I despise content theft as much as the next person, but claiming exclusive copyright over a design which looks uncannily similar to Ian Main’s Green Marinee (e-lusion.com/greenmarinee/) is a bit rich.

  6. Elliott Back says:

    It’s the content, not the presentation, that I own and that was copied.

  7. Lorell says:

    I despise content theft as much as the next person, but claiming exclusive copyright over a design which looks uncannily similar to Ian Main’s Green Marinee (e-lusion.com/greenmarinee/) is a bit rich.

    Yeah wank your right. The worlds is changing. Well he has deleted the posts and Elliott doesn’t even have courtesy to update or delete this post

    LoL

  8. wank says:

    You claim to be

    the exclusive owner of the copyright works in question, that is, all of the content and design of my website [emphasis mine]

    Maybe next time it might be a good idea to read your cookie-cutter letter before you send it out?

  9. toplist says:

    Yeah Rahul your right. He is just a kid. And I think he didn’t know that Elliots content was copywritted.

  10. Rahul says:

    I think its time to delete this stupid post. What do u think ??
    Steal the whole blog design and copyrighjts it !
    LOL

    WTF ??

  11. JW says:

    While I didn’t see the copied post, and I don’t know if he wrote a review or just copied the article, I do want to see you shouldn’t blame India (I’m not Indian, if you wonder). I don’t think this accident has anything to do with outsourcing, nor with globalization or (Indian) spammers. The other content on the site doesn’t seem copied, so I don’t think you should blame India or label him as a spammer. Probably, it also wasn’t such a good idea either to post your mail on this blog before he had the chance to respond, especially if I read the previous comment here.

  12. Dheeraj says:

    he is a dumb guy his name is thilak he steal content from other sites and he also abuse the site owner here is the 1 of his abusing blog http://sankaranand.wordpress.com/2006/05/29/let-me-introduce-myself/#comments
    shankar anand is a nice gut but thilak abused him and he also stolen many content from his forum.

    he is 16 but he use to tell ppl that he is 21 and working in google :)
    read this
    http://www.tech-buzz.net/index.php/2006/06/18/get-a-free-rapidshare-premium-account/

    is any thing wrong with this guy thilak?

  13. secret says:

    lol..he cooks different stories for different ppl…he said to me that he stays in london and earns around $1000 pm…i mean wtf…hahahaha

  14. Brooks Tower says:

    Nice work on tracking down this culprit and getting resolution. Copyright infringement is a serious issue and it must be treated as such.

    Thanks for sharing the actions you took to get the content removed, I have had my own photos ripped off and stripped of their watermark before and my attempts to get the content removed were ineffective. Next time, I’ll use your approach.

    As an aside, I completely disagree with the comment that your post/actions were insulting the entire country of India …. “Its always wrong to insult the whole India for just one guy.” The fact that the culprit was in India is relevant, but your comments never appeared to be attacking the entire country.

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